“Easy Scapegoats”: Guns, Not The Mentally Ill, Kill People
After a year of violent tragedies that culminated with the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, America is finally having a conversation about gun control. For the many who want to decrease access to firearms in the wake of several mass shootings, new laws being proposed around the country to limit and regulate guns and ammunition represent a momentous first step.
But running through the gun-control debate is a more delicate conversation: how to handle mental-health treatment in America. Among both Democrats and Republicans, in both the pro-gun and anti-gun lobbies, there’s a widespread belief that mental-health treatment and monitoring is key to decreasing gun violence. Shining more light on the needs and struggles of the mentally ill would normally be a positive change; mental-health programs and services have been cut year after year in the name of austerity. But in the context of gun violence, those with mental illness have become easy scapegoats. Rather than offering solutions to the existing problems that patients and providers face, policymakers instead promise to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. The trouble is, that often means presenting policies that are actually detrimental to mental-health treatment—threatening doctor-patient confidentiality, expanding forced treatment rather than successful voluntary programs, and further stigmatizing people with databases that track who’s been committed to hospitals or mental institutions.
The National Rifle Association has led the charge to blame those with mental illness. “The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters—people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them,” NRA executive vice president Wayne Lapierre said at his December 21 press conference. “How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?” Ann Coulter was more succinct: “Guns don’t kill people, the mentally ill do.”
It’s not just the NRA and the right wing who are turning mentally ill Americans into political pawns. See, for instance, New York’s new gun-control law, the first passed after Newtown. In addition to banning assault weapons and semiautomatic guns with military-level components, the legislation requires therapists, nurses and other mental-health-care providers to alert state health authorities if they deem a patient is a danger to self or others. That would then allow the state to confiscate the person’s guns. The measure broadens the confiscation powers to include those who voluntarily seek commitment to a mental-health facility—in other words, the people who get help without being forced. Finally, it strengthens Kendra’s Law, which allows the courts to involuntarily commit the mentally ill.
Other states will very likely follow suit. Legislatures in Ohio and Colorado will both consider measures to make it easier to commit people. Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley wants to broaden the range of people banned from owning guns to include those who have been civilly committed to mental institutions at any time. Policymakers in Louisiana, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Utah have also proposed measures aimed specifically at keeping the mentally ill from getting guns.
The new rules and proposals perpetuate the assumption that people with mental illness are dangerous; instead of making people safer, the requirements may hurt efforts to get the mentally ill treatment. For instance, the expanded reporting requirements mean mental-health providers must alert officials if a patient may harm herself or others. Law-enforcement officials can then show up and confiscate any guns the patient owns. Mental-health providers are already supposed to report if a patient seems in imminent danger of doing harm, but the new law broadens that rule. It could easily chip away trust between therapists and their patients. The threat of gun confiscation may make it less likely that folks like policeman and veterans suffering from trauma to get help, since many are gun owners. “It’s very hard to get people to come forward and get help,” says Ron Honberg, the national director for policy and legal affairs at the mental-health advocacy group National Alliance on Mental Illness. “If they’re aware that by seeking help they’re going to lose their right to have a gun, we’re concerned it’s going to have a chilling effect.”
It’s also not likely to slow down the violence. Predicting murderous behavior is extremely difficult and most of the time, the providers can’t do it accurately. “We’re making an assumption that violence can be predicted,” Honberg says. In fact, it’s lack of treatment, combined with substance abuse and a history of violence, that tend to be the best predictors of future violence. Yet many of New York’s new laws—like the reporting requirements and the push to put more mentally ill people in government databases—target those who are already getting help.
The issue is not that mental-health advocates want to arm more people, but that those with mental illness are being singled out by often well-intended gun control measures, which could increase the stigma around getting help. By focusing on keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill specifically—and not those who have histories of substance abuse, domestic violence, and other predictors of violent behavior—these laws perpetuate the idea that the mentally ill are an overwhelming threat. So did a recent report from Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which highlighted the gaps in reporting mentally ill people to the NICS database; in red pullout text, it prominently displayed examples of mentally ill people responsible for violence.
The stereotype that the mentally ill are very violent is simply incorrect. According to the National Institute for Mental Health, people with severe mental illness, like schizophrenia, are up to three times more likely to be violent, but “most people with [severe mental illness] are not violent and most violent acts are not committed by people with [severe mental illness.]” On the whole, those with mental illness are responsible for only 5 percent of violent crimes.
“People with mental illness are so much more likely to be victims of crimes than perpetrators that it’s almost immeasurable,” says Debbie Plotnick, the senior director of state policy at Mental Health America, an advocacy group for mental-health treatment. According to one study, people with mental illness are 11 times more likely to be the victims of violence.
Fortunately, the national conversation hasn’t been entirely negative. Advocates see an undeniable opportunity to get more funding and attention to mental-health services. For the first time in recent memory, governors and lawmakers across the political spectrum are pushing for more dollars to help those with mental illness. That’s particularly important because over the past four years, $4.35 billion was cut in funding for Medicaid mental-health funding, substance abuse, housing, and other mental-health programs at the state and federal level. Now, even Kansas’s ultra-conservative Governor Sam Brownback is pushing for $10 million more for mental-health care. South Carolina Governor Nicki Haley, a Tea Party favorite, has also argued for an increase in funding. In Oklahoma, Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri, legislatures will very likely consider investing more heavily in treatment of mental illness.
The investment is badly needed. Over the years, most states have cut back to only providing emergency and crisis care for mental illnesses. That’s both expensive and ineffective. Harvey Rosenthal, executive director of the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitative Services, says the most successful programs are those that focus on getting a patient help wherever they are, while providing other necessities like housing. For instance, the “housing first” model provides housing to people who might not otherwise qualify and then layers on services like mental health and substance abuse treatment. Such programs, like New York’s Pathways to Housing, have an astounding 85 percent retention rate, and according to Rosenthal, they’re successful because they tailor to a person’s specific needs rather than telling patients “you’re mentally ill and you need medicine.”
More attention to the cracks in care for the mentally ill is a good thing. While it may not have much to do with gun violence, there is a serious mental-health-care problem in the country.
By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, February 7, 2013
“18 Year Olds Can Buy Handguns”: Easier To Buy Three Glocks Than A Case Of Bud
If you’re 18, the law says you can’t buy a handgun. But you can buy a handgun without breaking the law. This paradox exists thanks to a little-noticed manifestation of the so-called gun show loophole, which keeps government regulations out of private gun sales.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 made it illegal for a gun dealer to sell handgun to anyone under the age of 21. “Sales of handguns and ammunition for handguns are limited to persons 21 years of age and older,” the ATF’s official Federal Firearms Regulations Reference Guide states. But the agency’s regulations only apply to federally licensed firearms dealers, not to non-professional private sellers.
“A high school senior in most states can go to a gun show, go online, or any other place that they might find a private seller and lawfully purchase a gun that they couldn’t otherwise at a gun dealer,” explained David Chipman, a former ATF special agent who now works with Mayors Against Illegal Guns.
“That is correct,” confirmed George Semonick of the ATF. “Under federal law, it’s not unlawful for an 18-year-old to posses a handgun,” Semonick explained to Salon, though some states have their own age requirements for handgun possession.
While Congress will soon consider legislation to close the part of the private seller loophole that lets them sell guns without background checks, the handgun age restriction loophole has so far not been specifically addressed or even much noticed. “I’m shocked that the media hasn’t jumped on this,” Chipman told Salon.
But the Internet is way ahead of Washington (and the media) and can helpfully explain this nuance in the gun laws to anyone looking for answers. “How should I go about buying a pistol? I’m 18 years old?” one user asked on Yahoo’s question forum. There are plenty of informed responses: “You cannot buy from a dealer if you are under 21. You can buy from a private sale in many states, but not all states,” one read.
Another: “To be honest your best bet is to place a WTB [want to buy] classified, make sure you are up front about your age because lots of Face to Face sellers won’t sell to someone under 21.” A third: “Basically you have to put an ad in your paper saying you would like to purchase one of these or pick it up at a gun show.”
A separate user wrote that he or she had “heard from a lot of virginia residents that you can buy a gun at 18 years old in virginia at a gun show without a license i also know a couple of people that have bought from gun shows.”
The topic has come up on numerous gun forums as well, where commenters can give sophisticated explanations of the dichotomy between licensed dealers and private sellers. “I hate when people don’t know that you can sell a handgun to a 19 year old in a private purchase,” one commenter complained. Another responded: “Unfortunately, it will be very hard to convince something is legal if they feel it is illegal … All you can do is print out 18 USC 922(x) and the ‘providing firearms to juveniles or minors’ statutes in your state.”
“It’s quite legal for a nonprofessional to sell it to the 18-to-20-year-old, and for the 18-to-20-year-old to buy it, even if the nonprofessional knows or suspects that the buyer is under 21,” wrote libertarian-leaning lawyer Eugene Volokh on his popular blog back in 2010. Volokh notes that while the 18-to-20-year-old “can’t have someone buy it specifically for him, since that would be conspiracy to make a false statement, given that the straw purchaser would have to falsely assert that the gun is for the straw purchaser himself,” he can buy it from a private seller. (Although, one 18-year-old in Pennsylvania found a state-specific loophole that let his father legally purchase a handgun for him.)
Laws vary from state to state and while some make it illegal for people under the age of 21 to purchase or possess a handgun at all, others go by federal law, which deals only with sales from gun dealers. An 18-to-20-year-old cannot, however, obtain a concealed carry license in any state, as they all set the threshold at 21.
The ATF’s Semonick explained that this loophole sometimes creates unexpected complications. For instance, if an 18-year-old brings their legally purchased handgun into a gun store for repairs, the licensed dealer is not allowed to return the gun, as that would violent federal law prohibiting the transfer of a handgun from a dealer to someone under 21-years-old.
“As a law enforcement professional, this was one of my concerns,” former ATF agent Chipman said. “It shouldn’t be easier to go buy three Glocks than to buy a case of Bud. But that’s the case.”
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, February 5, 2013
“Too Few Deaths”: The Big NRA Flip-Flop On Background Checks
You know, I had premonitions of this story, thinking: Didn’t the NRA used to support universal background checks as the alternative to every gun control measure? Between deadline pressures and the fear that I was having a senior moment, I didn’t follow it up. But now, via TPM’s Evan McMorris-Santoro, we have a former NRA president acknowledging that used to be the organization’s position not that very long ago, but has “changed its mind”:
The former president of the National Rifle Association told CNN Thursday night that the group has changed its mind on universal background checks. Back in 1999, after the Columbine school shooting, the NRA actually ran ads saying “it’s reasonable to provide for instant background checks at gun shows, just like gun stores and pawn shops.”
After last month’s school massacre in Newtown, Conn., the group has sounded a different note. Universal background checks are a waste of time at best and a “federal nightmare” that would lead to confiscation at worst, NRA leaders have said recently.
On CNN, former NRA President Sandy Froman admitted that the group dramatically changed its tune on universal background checks — which gun control advocates have said are their number one post-Newtown goal — and explained the reason was that the NRA now sees expanded background checks as totally ineffective.
“Yes, the NRA has changed its position,” Froman said. “And the reason it’s changed its position is because the system doesn’t work. The (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) is not working now. We have to get that working before we can add any more checks to that system. It’s already overburdened. In Colorado, I know it takes 10 — 10 days to do an instant check.”
So why not fix the system? If the NRA’s basic position is its members are law-abiding citizens who have no reason to fear background checks, why is it a problem?
Current NRA President David Keene echoed those concerns at a meeting with reporters Thursday while explaining his group’s opposition to expanded background checks. But he also sounded a more ominous note, warning that a universal background check infrastructure was possibly a first step toward a dismantling of Second Amendment rights.
“One of the reasons we’re fearful of a system like that is because we have been and continue to be and will continue to be very opposed to any kind of national gun registry system,” Keene told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor-sponsored breakfast. “For several reasons. The historic reason of course is that is a precursor in many cases to confiscation.”
So boil off the evasions, and we’re right back to the insane idea that Barack Obama is part of, a front for, or a precursor to, a totalitarian regime, and that “patriots” need the right to keep their military-style weapons on hand in case the day arrives when it’s time to start killing cops and members of the U.S. Armed Forces.
Somebody with access to these people needs to very directly ask them their own personal indicators for when it’s time to start the blood-letting.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, February 1, 2013
“NRA”: The National Regulation-Resisters Association
Sometimes common sense isn’t a common trait.
Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association’s executive vice president, is a shining example of this. He continues to voice resistance to even the most basic kinds of changes in existing gun policy, changes that almost all Americans support, changes that would have little impact on the rights and ability of sane, law-abiding citizens to purchase legal weapons.
First, some background.
The White House released its plan to reduce gun violence two weeks ago, a month after the horrific school shooting in Newtown, Conn.
The plan covered closing loopholes in the background check system, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, as well as improving school safety and mental health services.
Public opinion polls suggested that people generally supported the president’s plan.
A Gallup poll conducted the day after the president presented his plan found that 53 percent of Americans would want their representatives in Congress to vote for it.
An ABC/Washington Post poll last week found that 53 percent of Americans favored it.
And a Pew Research Center poll last week found that a majority of Americans thought the plan was about right or didn’t go far enough. Only 31 percent thought that it went too far.
In fact, one of the greatest points of agreement among Americans is the need for universal background checks, as the president proposed.
A Gallup poll released last week found that 91 percent of Americans would vote to “require criminal background checks for all gun sales” if they could.
From a public relations perspective, trying to find some common ground on this issue with the public would seem a no-brainer. Not so for the No Brain-ers.
On Wednesday, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence, LaPierre, as is his wont, gave a rambling, twisted argument against, that’s right, universal background checks.
LaPierre said during the hearings:
“My problem with background checks is you are never going to get criminals to go through universal background checks. All the law-abiding people, you’ll create an enormous federal bureaucracy, unfunded, hitting all the little people in the country, will have to go through it, pay the fees, pay the taxes.”
He continued:
“We don’t even prosecute anybody right now that goes through the system we have. So, we’re going to make all those law-abiding people go through the system and then we aren’t going to prosecute any of the bad guys if they do catch one. ”
So LaPierre’s argument, if I can follow this spiral of spuriousness, is that if we don’t prosecute “bad guys,” then there is no use in checking buyers in the first place so that “bad guys” could be identified and prevented from making the purchases. As best I can tell that seems to be it, and if that is it then I say: you can’t be serious.
Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, shot back:
“Mr. LaPierre, that’s the point. The criminals won’t go to purchase the guns because there’ll be a background check. We’ll stop them from original purchase. You missed that point completely. It’s basic.”
The room erupted in applause.
Universal background checks would seem a basic and exceedingly reasonable proposal. I would add that there should also be universal prosecutions for being intentionally misleading during those checks. But LaPierre is a different kind of person. His interests are not the same as most Americans’. His organization and the majority of so-called “pro gun rights” groups are in the business of unfettered gun proliferation as a means of increasing gun industry profit.
This is about money, pure and simple.
Wednesday morning, before LaPierre’s testimony, the Republican Joe Scarborough of MSNBC said on his show:
“You know what the greatest danger to that Second Amendment right and that guarantee is right now? Extremism from the survivalist wing of the N.R.A. that impacts Republicans’ policies nationwide and moves the Republican Party so far away from mainstream America that they lose the House, they lose the Senate again in ’14, and they lose the presidency again. And the next president will be Democratic.”
I would have to agree with that.
LaPierre is fanning paranoia because it helps grow the N.R.A.’s membership rolls and helps the N.R.A.’s friends and benefactors in the gun industry. And the N.R.A. uses its war chest to scare cowering politicians into taking unreasonable positions.
But extreme resistance to change is no longer acceptable with most of the public. People want action. They’re demanding it. Extreme resistance in this climate could prove more politically poisonous, particularly to some Republicans, than upsetting the N.R.A.
At this moment you have an outraged public against the gun profiteers and the gutless politicians. I believe in the end the people will win.
By: Charles M. Blow, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, January 30, 2013
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